About the unattended "object".

[Sirine]

Sometimes we jettison the waste fuel tank around orbit, and it goes orbit as debris.

In atmosphere environment it just disappear after 2.5km from 'focus', even with Kerbal in it. (The poor Kerbal just Missing In Action "MIA").

So, my question is, how to make that 2.5km further?

I would like to make a free-return-trajectory to Mun, and dump my things back to Kerbin, and "land it" on ocean or land. (Without focusing on them.) on the other word. Land that debris back to Kerbin. (With Parachute pre-activated.)

Edited December 23, 2013 by Sirine

[Hodo]

Easy answer. Attach a probe or remote guidance unit to the part. This way you can control it once you discard it. Unfortunately without a plugin you won't be able to keep it around if it is in atmosphere outside of 2.5km. In space it will be flagged as debris and left there in its orbit until it collides with something or burns up in an atmosphere.

[Sirine]

plugin name plz

[Kerbart]

plugin name plz

I think that was more meant as a pre-emptive answer to somebody claiming that you can if you have plugin XYZ. As Hodo pointed out, add a control unit to your "debris" and the problem is solved. You'll need to "guide" it through the atmosphere anyway as that is the only way KSP with deal with the atmosphere for you.

[Tassyr]

plugin name plz

I think you meant "What's the name of the plugin, please?"

Lazor lets you do this to some degree.

[capi3101]

You can do this stock; probably the first practical probe core that comes up is the Probodobodyne OKTO with Advanced Flight Control on Tier 4 (90 Sci). You'll need batts to keep it running, of course, but once it's in a free return trajectory it won't use up any power unless you leave SAS on. So once you're in the free-return trajectory, switch SAS off, activate the chute and then decouple it from the payload. Easy peasy.

As for having the delta-V to do a Munar flyby - that's going to depend on the mass of your payload, of course. But it's easily doable with Tier 3 tech (doable with starting tech too, just harder).

RGUs...neither one are available until Tier 7 (last tier), which is a damn shame.

[Dave Kerbin]

As long as your mothership is not going to crash or enter the atmosphere in the mean time you can use the [ and ] keys to switch to your dropped package and follow it down which ensures it does not disappear. It doesn't even need to have a probe core as long as your staging releases the parachute at the same time it decouples (you can follow debris and recover it).

The mod that can increase distance is the Lazor System mod. On the space center screen use the options window. However increasing the distance can have a big impact on your computers performance, and objects being simulated very far away may suffer physics glitches (spinning out of control, being torn apart, blowing up) because of the increase in rounding errors the farther away from the craft's center you are.

[Sirrobert]

Your plan won't work anyway, cause without you looking at it, physics aren't activated for ships. If you have a ship with an orbit going through the atmosphere, it won't experience drag if you aren't focussing on it.

Also the paracutes won't do anything if you point it at the ground